Gregory to Greenwald: Why shouldn’t you be charged with aiding and abetting Snowden?

posted at 1:21 pm on June 24, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

Welcome to this week’s Journalism Rohrshach Test. The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald appeared on Meet the Press yesterday, where NBC host David Gregory posed a question that has been certainly in the public square over the last few weeks. Should a reporter who aids and abets the dissemination of classified material be criminally liable for those acts? Greenwald blasts Gregory for even asking the question:

DAVID GREGORY: To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?

GLENN GREENWALD: I think it’s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies. The assumption in your question, David, is completely without evidence — the idea that I’ve aided and abetted him in any way.

The scandal that arose in Washington before our stories began was about the fact that the Obama administration is trying to criminalize investigative journalism by going through the emails and records of AP reporters, accusing a Fox News journalist of the theory that you just embraced, being co-conspirator in felonies for working with sources. If you want to embrace that theory, it means that every investigative journalist in the United States who works with their sources, who receives classified information, is a criminal.

And it’s precisely those theories and precisely that climate that has become so menacing in the United States. It’s why the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer said investigative reporting has come to a standstill — her word — as a result of the theories that you just referenced.

Gregory represents the pablum punditry with a status quo bias. His weekly panel of DC insiders passes for serious discussion of public policy without ever piercing the veil of what’s behind the curtain in the capital. …

Greenwald represents the integrity of journalists before the corporate-state became the arbitrator of what is legal and what is illegal journalism.

Greenwald, in the tradition of Seymour Hersh, Jane Meyer, and so many others, is doing what credible political and investigative journalists used to do, hold the government and other institutions accountable, reporting to achieve transparency.

Now, we have the journalistic lackies like David Gregory and the Washington Post implying – as an echo chamber for the Obama adminstration [sic] – that pursuing such professional responsibilities may be a crime.

I’m no fan of Gregory, but, er … perhaps there’s another explanation for this? Meet the Press is a talk show that debates issues, after all. A journalist who asks a controversial question doesn’t necessarily endorse the view; perhaps the host might just want to give the guest a chance to answer a question, even if it is a “jerk question,” as Dave Weigel says:

C'mon, asking the jerk question that spurs the guest to get outraged is basic TV journalism. You're talking about it, aren't you?

I found the DoJ’s actions in regard to James Rosen outrageous, and I don’t think journalists should face criminal charges for reporting on government activities, even if their sources often should. But I think it’s a real stretch to accuse Gregory of endorsing the prosecution of journalists just because he plays devil’s advocate with Greenwald on a show that’s supposed to feature some tough questions for the guests. Journalists should be prepared to deal with that, no?

Update: Plus, there’s this:

@EdMorrissey Same reason Gregory wasn't charged with possession of illegal firearm for brandishing weapon on MTP?

In the letter, Nathan explained: “Influencing our judgment in this case, among other things, is our recognition that the intent of the temporary possession and short display of the magazine was to promote the First Amendment purpose of informing an ongoing public debate about firearms policy in the United States, especially while this subject was foremost in the minds of the public” after the Connecticut school massacre and President Obama’s address to the nation.

I’m no fan of Gregory, but, er … perhaps there’s another explanation for this? Meet the Press is a talk show that debates issues, after all. A journalist who asks a controversial question doesn’t necessarily endorse the view; perhaps the host might just want to give the guest a chance to answer a question, even if it is a “jerk question,” as Dave Weigel says:

Really, Ed? An entire article about David Gregory asking about charging journalists with crimes, and not once do you mention this?

MadisonConservative on June 24, 2013 at 1:28 PM

Yeah, I don’t know how Ed forgot about that(or found it irrelevant). Even if you think the question was ok, David Gregory has no business asking it given how he could’ve and should’ve been prosecuted for what he did a few months ago.

But I think it’s a real stretch to accuse Gregory of endorsing the prosecution of journalists just because he plays devil’s advocate with Greenwald on a show that’s supposed to feature some tough questions for the guests. Journalists should be prepared to deal with that, no?

I might be inclined to agree with you if David Gregory had a reputation for asking tough questions to all his guests.

But I think it’s a real stretch to accuse Gregory of endorsing the prosecution of journalists just because he plays devil’s advocate with Greenwald on a show that’s supposed to feature some tough questions for the guests.

But I think it’s a real stretch to accuse Gregory of endorsing the prosecution of journalists just because he plays devil’s advocate with Greenwald on a show that’s supposed to feature some tough questions for the guests. Journalists should be prepared to deal with that, no?

Both sides of the interview should be prepared to “deal with that”…no?

Oh for crying out loud, he wasn’t playing devils advocate, he called Greenwald a felon for aiding and abetting Snowden. Just because Gregory got called on it in real time through Twitter then made up the BS excuse of “just asking question” doesn’t change that. It’s like Morrissey telling everyone you didn’t see what you actually saw. Only question is why Morrissey is doing it.

Didn’t he bother to explain that THOSE rules only apply when a Republican is in office, once you get a Democrat everything changes, including the constitution.

I do believe this should answer any and all questions about the journalists at NBC news. If this is the best they can get to do a Sunday “news” show, they’re in really tough shape at NBC/MSNBC. They could put Chris Matthews on there and get the same level of idiocy.

I might be inclined to agree with you if David Gregory had a reputation for asking tough questions to all his guests.

Curtiss on June 24, 2013 at 1:39 PM

This. I don’t buy it as playing Devil’s Advocate. I do think he’s playing Advocate though.

Perhaps I’ve just become too much of a cynic. Anyway, in the grand scheme of things in the media that I get fussed about, this ranks pretty low. Now if he continues to ask that same kind of question in similar instances, then I’m going to get worried.

Gregory gets a pass from Obama’s tools in DOJ for intentionally violating DC’s gun laws to make a cheap dramatic gesture on Meet The Press. (Citizens get no such consideration from the DOJ’s DC US Attorney.)

Gregory asks the “jerk question” that coincidentally echoes the Obama spin on the Snowden leaks. (Citizens don’t have national TV soapboxes available for the repayment of favors.)

Bonus: Ed’s buddy Dave Weigel is coordinating the Son Of Journolist. (Is Ed on Weigie’s new list? Any other Hot Air crew members? Or are they all just as shocked as the rest of us at Weigie’s ongoing perversions?)

It is now well known that the Obama justice department has prosecuted more government leakers under the 1917 Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined – in fact, double the number of all such prior prosecutions. But as last week’s controversy over the DOJ’s pursuit of the phone records of AP reporters illustrated, this obsessive fixation in defense of secrecy also targets, and severely damages, journalists specifically and the newsgathering process in general.

Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ – that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for “soliciting” the disclosure of classified information – is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself. These latest revelations show that this is not just a theory but one put into practice, as the Obama DOJ submitted court documents accusing a journalist of committing crimes by doing this.

Indeed, as Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler noted recently in the New Republic, when the judge presiding over Manning’s prosecution asked military lawyers if they would “have pressed the same charges if Manning had given the documents not to WikiLeaks but directly to the New York Times?”, the prosecutor answered simply: “Yes, ma’am”. It has long been clear that this WikiLeaks-as-criminals theory could and would be used to criminalize establishment media outlets which reported on that which the US government wanted concealed.

Now we know that the DOJ is doing exactly that: applying this theory to criminalize the acts of journalists who report on what the US government does in secret, even though there is no law that makes such reporting illegal and the First Amendment protects such conduct. Essentially accusing James Rosen of being an unindicted co-conspriator in these alleged crimes is a major escalation of the Obama DOJ’s already dangerous attacks on press freedom.

It is virtually impossible at this point to overstate the threat posed by the Obama DOJ to press freedoms. Back in 2006, Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales triggered a major controversy when he said that the New York Times could be prosecuted for having revealed the Top Secret information that the NSA was eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without warrants. That was at the same time that right-wing demagogues such Bill Bennett were calling for the prosecution of the NYT reporters who reported on the NSA program, as well as the Washington Post’s Dana Priest for having exposed the CIA black site network.

But despite those public threats, the Bush DOJ never went so far as to formally accuse journalists in court filings of committing crimes for reporting on classified information. Now the Obama DOJ has.

‘The Bill of Rights changed the original Constitution into a new charter under which no branch of government could abridge the people’s freedoms of press, speech, religion, and assembly. Yet the Solicitor General argues and some members of the Court appear to agree that the general powers of the Government adopted in the original Constitution should be interpreted to limit and restrict the specific and emphatic guarantees of the Bill of Rights adopted later. I can imagine no greater perversion of history.

Madison and the other Framers of the First Amendment, able men that they were, wrote in language they earnestly believed could never be misunderstood: ‘Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press. . .’ Both the history and language of the First Amendment support the view that the press must be left free to publish news, whatever the source, without censorship, injunctions, or prior restraints…In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.

The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.

In other words, we are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment’s emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of ‘national security.’ The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to ‘make’ a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law.

The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have [to] bare the secrets of government and inform the people.’

— Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority, in New York Times Co. v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)

The Free Press Clause protects the freedom to publish, not solely writers and commercial publishers. The Founders intended for the lowliest, volunteer pamphleteer have the same constitutional protections as the Publisher of the New York Times or ‘journalists,’ who are paid for their work. The protection is to the publication – IN ANY MANNER – not merely to whom is doing the publishing (just as lawmakers were not full-time and had other jobs in the ‘real world,’ the Founding Fathers recognised that one could be both a farmer and a member of the ‘press.’) In the first case the Supreme Court dealing with the Free Press Clause, Lovell v City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 (1938), Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes defined ‘press’ as ‘every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion’ based upon the writings of the Founding Fathers.

The ‘press’ be it someone at the NYT or a blogger has First Amendment rights and CANNOT be prosecuted for seeking and publishing information.

The exceptions, which aren’t really exceptions, would be where a member of the press turns documents or other information over to a foreign country or foreign national acting on behalf of a foreign country OR where a journalist conspires with another to gain access and sell/publish it. In other words, if Greenwald had colluded with Snowden in a plot that would involve the latter getting a job for the sole purposes of stealing information to give to the former, then, that would probably be a crime. A journalist obtaining information from a source – even seeking it out – and publishing it is NOT a crime and is protected by the First Amendment.

Should a reporter who aids and abets the dissemination of classified material be criminally liable for those acts?

If a Republican is President, no.

If a Democrat is President, then, yes, definitely-national security you know.

Just like how Iraqi WMD never existed but Syrian WMD must be dealt with before the entire world is destroyed! (doesn’t matter if it’s the exact same WMD that was in Iraq in the first place…Boosh is still a lying criminal).

Dave Weigel of Slate, who was a central figure in the “JournOlist” controversy in 2010, has been running another listserv, described as “Weigolist” in an article by Ana Marie Cox at the UK Guardian on June 22.

But in 2013, 7 years after Leopold’s fake story was run, TruthOut still has it in in its archives, and it has never apologized to its “readers” for the story’s falseness, and it has never even added a simple correction to the article.

In fact, Low-IQ Democrats are still posting comments to the archived story, 7 years later.

Gregory was not playing the Devil’s advocate. Listen to the question, he accused Greenwald of aiding and abetting him currently, with no evidence what so ever!

Also the clip ended early and we missed the follow up by Gregory where he basically said Greenwald was not a real journalist. I kind of expected better analysis on this website.

OliverB on June 24, 2013 at 3:03 PM

Yup. It would seem Ed needs a refresher course in logical fallacies, loaded questions and circular reasoning. To not catch the glaring example offered up by Gregory is embarrassing, to say nothing of buying into it.

I know, right? Rumor has it that Snowden did not graduate from high school but even if he had, his expectations of getting hired and being put into a position of having access to “top secret” information has to be along the same level of me winning the lottery on those weeks I remember to buy a ticket.

“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” Snowden told the South China Morning Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

Really, they gave him that list before they hired him and checked him out? Was one of them the Xerox machine? Fax?

I’m no fan of Gregory, but, er … perhaps there’s another explanation for this? Meet the Press is a talk show that debates issues, after all. A journalist who asks a controversial question doesn’t necessarily endorse the view; perhaps the host might just want to give the guest a chance to answer a question, even if it is a “jerk question,” as Dave Weigel says:
. . . (blah, blah, blah)”

And then, there is Ed’s tweet, followed by you stretching this Gregory “point” into a devil’s advocacy quip:

It’s a bit of irony, but also evidence that Gregory was offering a devil’s-advocate position here.

Wait a second, Allah!

First, consider the fact that THIS was Gregory’s question:

DAVID GREGORY: To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?

Gregory did NOT ask it this way:

NOT DAVID GREGORY: Some would say that you became an “accessory after the fact” to the crimes of Snowden, even in his current movements, and if so, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be criminally chargeable under those circumstances?

Gregory began his question with the clear presumption that Greenwald had somehow “aided and abetted” Snowden, a presumptive accusation of having actually engaged in the criminal behavior. What evidence is there of that?

Secondly, you made an entirely illogical jump — you presumed that because David Gregory personally chose to commit a distinct criminal act in order to avail himself of an opportunity to write a news story about it, that he somehow concluded there was a necessary relationship between his commission of that act, and the actions of another person in reporting on acts of a third party following the “commission” of a criminal act.

Greenwald’s actions at best could logically amount to becoming an “accessory after the fact” in a situation where someone else had clearly completed the actual criminal offense. Glenn didn’t “aide and abet” the commission of the crime, unless he encouraged Snowden in advance to steal the files so that he (Glenn) could then write about it! If he had, then he would and should be charged with the crime. But there is no evidence I’ve heard of to support that!